2014 Volume 22 Issue 2 Pages 47-56
The present study discusses the management and use of forest resources at settlement sites that produced wooden artifacts for a long time during the Yayoi to Kofun periods. In some cases, small settlement sites were scattered in the hilly terrain not to affect the surrounding environment. In others, settlement sites that deforested the surrounding environment were forced to move to densely wooded terrains at higher altitudes, or were relocating settlements along densely wooded plateaus, returning to the original place after 10 to 30 years. The last example parallels the moving pattern of Kiji-shi, bowl wood craftsman with lathe, in the early modern period. Since the late phase of the Yayoi period, an increase in population and cultivation caused exhaustion of the forest resources, especially in the Kinki region, and people had to move to remote mountains to produce wooded artifacts. Possibly, settlements on high grounds derived from these settlements and turned into Soma, forests of the state and powerful lords, in later periods. Large settlements formed in the alluvial lowland of the Kinki and Tokai regions probably maintained their life for a long time by obtaining wooden materials from surrounding secondary forests artificially made at an early stage.
